Gene Roddenberry posited a future utopian society which, among other things, had done away with money.
Gene Roddenberry also wrote lyrics for the ST:OS theme tune which were never used because Roddenberry himself cancelled their use (besides, they’re crap) .
He wrote them solely in order to qualify for “co-creator”
status so he could grab 50% of the fee and royalties paid to composer Alexander Courage, who didn’t know it was being done until after it had happened.
I’ve heard the theory that Kirk’s logs just get circulated round headquarters for lulz before being dumped in the circular file as obvious fabrications by someone bored with a frontier posting.
“Hey, have you seen this one? He says he fought Apollo.”
“What, the old earth probe?”
“Try the old earth GOD!”
“Hilarious! Classic Kirk! That’s better than the time when he was transported to an evil dimenison.”
The reason why in The Naked Now it was Riker who remembered that the previous polywater infection had happened is that he’s the sort of person who would read The Hilarious Adventures of Captain Kirk for fun.
I especially like this idea because of the implication that all the other captains in Starfleet are reporting perfectly ordinary experiences like visiting a space station, dropping off supplies at a colony, bit of a stand-off with some Klingons in disputed space but got out of it unscathed - and then there’s Kirk all, “sorry guys we’ve been off course this week because my first officer seriously needed to get laid (LIKE YOU HAVE NO IDEA MY NECK STILL HURTS)” and “let me tell you about the Chicago Gangster planet” and “WHIPPED AND THROWN IN JAIL BY SPACE NAZIS.”
It makes sense, though. In our universe, the Korean War lasted two years, but the show M*A*S*H lasts eleven seasons and shows multiple season changes, indicating that in that universe, it lasted much longer.
Wartime is often a time of huge technological advancement, as shown with the medical techniques created at the 4077 (e.g. the vascular clamp that led to better arterial operations). This means that by the time their Korean War ends, there would have been significantly more progress made in scientific fields. Additionally, if the M*A*S*H universe is unfortunate enough to have a Korean War and a Vietnam War, the anti-war sentiments would have been great. This could have pushed forward the social reforms which lead to Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.
Keep in mind, I only found out about this in November
We know the major wars of the late 20th Century are different in the Trek universe; for example, they had the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, which we didn’t have. Nor could we have, because we weren’t even CLOSE to doing genetic engineering on humans in the 1990s, but they obviously were. Or you couldn’t get Augments like Khan and the rest.
…the M*A*S*H cast are largely medical personnel so you could probably come up with a justification for at least one of them to be tangentially connected to the experimentation that created Khan and his fellows, leading to World War Three in the ‘90s and a few decades of low-level post-apocalypse
before the Vulcans showed up and we managed to just barely qualify for their help by launching a warp-capable manned breadbox at them
genuinely unsure if this would make M*A*S*H feel more or less dark than situating it within the presumption of real history!
i once wrote an entire academic paper with the central thesis of ‘everyone is kind of a dick to Data and it honestly kinda reflect how people treat neurodiverse people, which is also why we neurodiverse people relate to him so hard’
the original post was missing a line, so here’s the full poem!!
This episode ends with Geordi saving the planet by using something derived from the technology found in his visor (an adaptive device that lets him sense things around him). So a disabled man literally saved the lives of an entire culture that wouldn’t have considered his life worth living, using technology they would have never deemed necessary without the presence of his unique needs.
Don't give up. Unless you have to for a little while. Then don't panic. CONTAINS: Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, Critical Role, History, Current Affairs, Space, Cats, and Etc. Adult.
